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> This used to be nigh unto a human universal: your parents raise you up from a helpless infant to adulthood, and this obliges you to love and care for them for
by shadowoflight 5y ago
> This used to be nigh unto a human universal: your parents raise you up from a helpless infant to adulthood, and this obliges you to love and care for them for the rest of their lives.
Alternate take on that human universal: your parents had unprotected sex and fulfilled their obligation to raise the offspring produced to adulthood, this obliges you to nothing.
I'm not saying this means everyone should estrange their parents, but the idea that a child has any obligation to their parents for raising them seems misguided at best and damaging at worst, imo. Any attachment between children and parents should be due to mutual feelings of love and respect, like any other relationship - if those are absent on one side, why should the other suffer a relationship with people who they would otherwise remove from their friend group?
(Note that I have a good relationship with my parents, so this isn't coming from a place of personal pain, but rather a dislike for the idea that two humans procreating and fulfilling their obligation to the offspring that comes of it should impose any obligation whatsoever upon that offspring.)
EDIT: I should clarify that I do believe that parents who went above and beyond that obligation to show their children love and respect and receive nothing in return have a right to be upset - however, what about situations where a parent thought they were doing the right thing (based on how they were raised, religious briefs, parenting advice from a friend or magazine, etc.) but the thing they were doing was actually harmful? There's a lot of nuance in this, but I think that a blanket "honor thy father and thy mother [out of obligation]" is a bad idea.
- thereare5lights 5y agoThis is the individualistic take. The person you're responding to is referring to how societies worked since time immemorial, prior to the advent of such strong individualism.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y agoYou'll have to go back a very long way to find stable families that didn't have children leaving because they were bored, ambitious, abused, angry, or - in royal families - literally wanted to kill either or both of their parents and perhaps also their siblings so they could take over. One difference now is freely available contraception and a much lower birthrate, combined with more economic stability. (At least for the boomer gen.) When parents have two children and both are estranged, it's a tragedy. When parents had ten children, five of them made it to adulthood, and two decided to leave, it was acceptable attrition. The other difference is the absence of extended family and friends who can step in with childcare help. So parents + kids going through adolescence under the same roof becomes a pressure cooker. No one gets much of a break for 4-8 years.
- ceilingcorner 5y agoIn reality, no one owes anyone anything. That doesn’t make it ideal or justified. Turns out that’s a bad way to structure a society and being hyper individualistic just ends up in your society collapsing.
- michaelmrose 5y agoIf society collapses it will be because we ignored existential threats like climate change, nuclear war, biological warfare etc.
- ceilingcorner 5y agoWrong. Societies have dealt with far worse situations and managed to survive. Societal cohesion is what prevents anarchy in the long run, not avoiding natural disasters.
- msbarnett 5y agoPrecisely none of “climate change, nuclear war, biological warfare” constitute a natural disaster, nor has this quasi-neo-confucian conception of societal cohesion via filial piety historically triumphed over anything worse than any of these modern extinction scenarios.
- ceilingcorner 5y agoNone of those things would result in the complete extinction of human beings. The Black Death was pretty horrible and yet European society still exists.
- msbarnett 5y agoI’m not going to bother arguing about it, but suffice to say I don’t share your sunny optimism vis-a-vis nuclear holocaust.
- anp 5y agoHaving grown up in an environment exactly like your edit describes, I really appreciate you voicing this perspective.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jkhdigital 5y ago> the idea that a child has any obligation to their parents for raising them seems misguided at best and damaging at worst, imo Let me guess: you are not a parent
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- notsureaboutpg 5y agoThis is so ridiculous. Your parents have an obligation to you and you have none onto them? Why? They cared for you when you were helpless, in need. Why would you not be obligated to do the same? A blanket honor thy father and mother is a great idea since without them you would not exist. Without their care you would be an orphan or a foster child and statistically way more likely to have a rough life and less of the success and happiness you enjoy today. The article talks about children's "perceived entitlement" and it sounds like this. Woe to me if I make the sacrifices of a parent to have a child say this to me.